DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 117, 12 September 2005

Welcome to this year's 37th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Last week was an exciting one - besides GNOME 2.12 and the first beta release of Firefox 1.5, four major Linux distributions have been sprinting towards the finishing line, with the brand new Slackware Linux 10.2 release now imminent and the other three following within the next few weeks. In the meanwhile, Debian has announced security support for its testing branch, a move that will likely be greeted with much enthusiasm among the Debian users. Also in this week's issue: Microsoft tries to recruit a well-known open source advocate, a brief look at Foresight Linux and a quick review of Linux+ DVD, a popular European Linux magazine. Happy reading!

What an exciting week this was! Besides a stable release of GNOME 2.12 and a beta version of Firefox 1.5, four major Linux distributions have entered the final stages of their development cycles - Mandriva Linux 2006, Slackware Linux 10.2, SUSE Linux 10.0 and Ubuntu Linux 5.10. Of these, which one is going to be the winner? While Ubuntu seems like a distribution with the most new features, it is Mandriva's latest beta release that caught our attention during the past week. The reason? The breathtaking boot speed.

That's right - while many distributions have been talking about speeding up the boot process, an area where no Linux distribution compares favourably with Microsoft Windows, it seems that the developers of Mandriva did not just talk - they simply did it! And the result? On our Pentium 4 test box with 384MB of RAM, Mandriva 2006 RC1 takes 23 seconds to boot into the console login prompt, and 52 seconds into full KDE (bypassing the KDM login screen)! This is a remarkable achievement when compared to SUSE Linux 10.0 RC1, which takes 108 seconds to boot into KDE, or Fedora Core, which needs 76 seconds to boot into GNOME on the same system.

And while on the subject of Mandriva's upcoming release, here is a quick tip for those who wish to follow its development process. The easiest way to do so is to point the urpmi source to the "cooker" branch on your favourite mirror. You can do that from within the graphical user interface of DrakConf, or from the command line with urpmi.addmedia:

After the above command retrieves the "hdlist" file, you can perform an upgrade with

urpmi.update cooker
urpmi --auto-select --auto
urpmi kernel

Once the process completes you will be running the very latest cooker snapshot as it converges towards the stable release of Mandriva Linux 2006. Be aware, though, that some users have reported strange video behaviours due to the fact that Mandriva 2006 uses a development snapshot or X.Org, rather than the current stable version 6.8.2. Other than that, the new Mandriva is already looking pretty good. But don't expect it to be released according to schedule; the way things are progressing, it is likely that the final release of Mandriva Linux 2006, originally scheduled for release later this week, will be delayed by at least a week.

* * * * *

Debian adds security support for testing

The Debian project has announced full security support for its "testing" branch, currently also known as "etch":

"The Debian testing security team is pleased to announce the beginning of full security support for Debian's testing distribution. We have spent the past year building the team, tracking and fixing security holes, and creating our infrastructure, and now the final pieces are in place, and we are able to offer security updates and advisories for testing. We invite Debian users who are currently running testing, or who would like to switch to testing, to subscribe to the secure-testing-announce mailing list, which is used to announce security updates."

This unexpected decision is likely to be greeted with approval by many Debian fans. Since the distribution's stable releases only occur once every few years, many Debian users, especially those using their favourite distribution on the desktops and other less critical systems, prefer to run one of the Debian's development branches - unstable ("sid") or testing ("etch"). While the unstable branch is relatively highly up-to-date and security issues are usually dealt with promptly by upgrading the vulnerable package to a newer version, this is not always the case with the testing branch. As such, running the testing branch in a networked environment has always presented a potential security risk. Luckily, with the above-mentioned announcement, this is no longer true.

* * * * *

Dr Frederick H Berenstein, Xandros co-founder & Chairman dies

A sad news from Xandros Corporation tells us that the company's co-founder and Chairman, Dr Frederick H Berenstein, died last week at the age of 59:

"I have the sad duty to announce that Dr. Frederick H. Berenstein, our co-founder and Chairman, died on September 6, 2005, after a courageous battle over many years," Xandros CEO, Andreas Typaldos, announced today. 'Beyond Rick’s vision, inspiration, and leadership, which our industry, our company, and all of us will miss, I will personally miss his example of quiet courage, and his indomitable will, and determination. It is that courage and will, which enabled him to fight his illness, that also inspired Rick to push Linux forward, ahead of most other people, through visionary investments in companies such Ximian, CodeWeavers, and finally Xandros. His belief in the inevitability of Linux, from the days when I first met Rick in 1999 as one of his founding group of investors in Linux Global Partners, the Linux incubator that he had co-founded with his friend Wm. Jay Roseman, was infectious and hard to argue with,' Typaldos continued. 'There simply will not be another like him.'

Finally, something to brighten up your Monday - an amusing story, as shared by Eric S Raymond. Last week, the well-known open source advocate was approached by none other than Microsoft Corporation - with a job offer!

Now, if you are new to Linux and the open source movement, here is a little background. Among the many other claims to fame, Eric S Raymond is the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a 1991 book that discusses the differences between a centralised software development model (i.e. cathedral = proprietary software) and the open and decentralised development model (i.e. bazaar = open source software). He is also the person who has published and commented the famous Halloween documents, a series of Microsoft internal memoranda discussing strategies to fight (and destroy) Linux and other open source software. To illustrate the stance of Eric S Raymond, here is his comment accompanying one of the Halloween documents:

"For Microsoft (or at least its present business model) to survive, open source must die. It's a lot like the Cold War was; peaceful coexistence could be a stable solution for us, but it can never be for them, because they can't tolerate the corrosive effect on their customer relationships of comparisons with a more open system. (Anyone who thinks I'm being perfervid or overly melodramatic about this should review the direct long-term revenue and platform threat language from Halloween I. Other people may fool themselves about what this means, but Microsoft never has.)."

So even if you haven't heard of Eric S Raymond before, you should know by now that he is no friend of Microsoft -- and that's if we put it mildly. Now imagine the utter shock the following email must have caused when it appeared in Eric's mailbox last week:

"I am a member of the Microsoft Central Sourcing Team. Microsoft is seeking world class engineers to help create products that help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. Your name and contact info was brought to my attention as someone who could potentially be a contributor at Microsoft. I would love an opportunity to speak with you in detail about your interest in a career at Microsoft, along with your experience, background and qualifications. I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have and can also provide you with any information I have available in regard to the positions and work life at Microsoft."

Not surprisingly, this outrageous offer resulted in a reply that the Microsoft executive will never forget for as long as he lives:

"I'd thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both) couldn't get a clue if it were pounded into you with baseball bats. What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a Satanist orgy?"

Later in the email response, Eric continues to pile on more analogies on the hapless Microsoft executive:

"On the day *I* go to work for Microsoft, faint oinking sounds will be heard from far overhead, the moon will not merely turn blue but develop polkadots, and hell will freeze over so solid the brimstone will go superconductive. But I must thank you for dropping a good joke on my afternoon. On that hopefully not too far distant day that I piss on Microsoft's grave, I sincerely hope none of it will splash on you."

You can read the entire email exchange (and more amusing reader's comments) on this page.

Featured distribution of the week: Foresight Linux

Foresight Linux

Foresight Linux made the headlines last week for being the first Linux distribution to ship with GNOME 2.12, only hours after the popular desktop environment was publicly announced and released. Since GNOME 2.12 is a major upgrade with some interesting new features, its presence in Foresight Linux provided a valid reason to download and install this new distribution.

First, a little background. Foresight Linux is based on rPath Linux (formerly known as Specifix Linux), built by several well-known ex-Red Hat software engineers, including Michael K. Johnson and Matt Wilson, among others. The main feature distinguishing rPath Linux from other distributions is its "Conary" package management, which promises to be a state-of-the-art software management system. Although the technical aspect of Conary are a little obscure and will mainly benefit enterprise customers with frequent needs to selectively upgrade certain packages across their networks, let's trust the developers who have extensive experience in package management and distribution building and who are likely to know what they are doing -- without having to study lengthy white papers describing the merits of Conary and rPath Linux.

Besides rPath Linux, Foresight Linux is the first distribution that uses the Conary package management. Unlike rPath, however, Foresight is clearly a desktop-oriented distribution, which means that it includes the latest versions of many software packages that are "shaping the future of Linux", as claims the release announcement. Beagle, Cowbell, F-Spot, Gnomebaker, Grisbi, Howl, Xchat-Gnome are the packages mentioned in this context. The introduction of a boot splash screen and a good selection of desktop applications further confirm the fact that Foresight Linux intends to be an innovative and attractive distribution for your desktop.

Once you install Foresight Linux on your computer, there is no need to re-install any new version of the distribution; instead, packages can be upgraded from within a convenient Synaptic-like graphical package management utility, called "Conary System Manager". Although it lacks a package search module, it is easy to use and it provides a quick list of available package updates in the right pane. The software is still in heavy development, but it is safe to use it for your package upgrade tasks.

Other than that, Foresight Linux is a nicely designed distribution with the Anaconda installer, pretty and functional GNOME desktop, and a good selection of best-loved open source applications available today. Give it a try and see for yourself!

If you live in Europe or if you've had a chance to visit one of the big news agents and book stores on the old continent, you've probably noticed a large number of Linux-related magazines available on the shelves. While many of these magazines are published by small, independent companies operating within the language market of their own country, there is one publisher that has made a tremendous effort to deliver Linux-related publications to large areas of Europe. This company is Software Wydawnictwo, based in Warsaw, Poland.

The editors of the Software Wydawnictwo publishing house were kind enough to send us sample copies of some of their magazines, including Linux+ DVD, Hakin9 and Software Developer's Journal. Although the last two include plenty of content related to open source software, only Linux+ is a magazine devoted entirely to Linux, with occasional sections dealing with other open source operating systems, such as BSD and OpenSolaris. It's worth mentioning that the company also publishes other interesting titles, including PHP Solutions and Aurox Linux.

We looked through the September issue of Linux+ DVD to find plenty of exciting content. Distribution reviews seem to occupy a large portion of the magazine and those who like to read authors' experiences with various products won't be disappointed. Brief reviews of Fedora Core 4, PC-BSD 0.7.5, Mandriva 2006 Beta, Aurox Linux 11.0, OpenSolaris, AGNULA/DeMuDi 1.2.1, and Xandros SurfSide Linux are all lined up for our attention. Besides distributions, there is also much database-related content in this issue, including an article about EnterpriseDB, an interview with David Axmark, a developer of MySQL, and a tutorial for MySQL Administrator. Several open source applications are also reviewed and the magazine includes good sections full of tips and tricks, a gamer's corner, and a Linux guide designed for absolute beginners. A comprehensive article deals with the current state of connecting mobile devices to systems running Linux. One thing we liked about the 82-page full-colour magazine is that it carries very little advertising.

The magazine includes two DVDs. The first of them is a bootable DVD containing the complete Fedora Core 4 and Fedora Extras for the i386 architecture, while the second one is packed with the latest software applications, books in PDF format, and several distributions, such as the magazine's very own Linux+ Live (based on Aurox Linux), INSERT, PC-BSD, and OpenSolaris. Interestingly, the DVD also contains 13 episodes of Go Open, a TV program about open source software created by The Shuttleworth Foundation and aired recently on a South African national TV station. That's quite a lot of interesting content to keep you occupied for a while!

I enjoyed the magazine tremendously. There are only two negatives worth mentioning: the first one is the fact that the writers seem to be biased towards Fedora Core and many of the tutorials assume that you are running Fedora or a Fedora-based distribution, while the second problem, potentially more serious, is that the magazine is not yet available in English. But those who are well versed in Czech, French, German, Polish or Spanish won't have a problem. However, certain other publications by Software Wydawnictwo do have English-language editions so it is possible that it won't be long before we'll also see the English edition of Linux+ on news stands.

For more information and subscriptions please visit Software Wydawnictwo at Software.com.pl.

Released Last Week

Network Security Toolkit 1.2.3

Network Security Toolkit (NST) is a Fedora-based bootable live CD designed to provide easy access to best-of-breed open source network security applications. A new version was released yesterday: "We are pleased to announce the 1.2.3 release of the NST. We have spent a considerable amount of time enhancing the management capabilities of the NST probe in addition to bringing the security tools up to date. In particular: Snort rules management and configuration; remote file/directory browsing; VNC session management; simplified virus scanning; and many additions to the NST web-based interface." See the release announcement on the project's home page.

Foresight Linux 0.9 is the first distribution release to ship with the brand new GNOME 2.12, released yesterday: "We are happy to announce the availability of Foresight Linux 0.9! Foresight takes another major step forward towards usability and functionality with the first release of the 0.9 series, and having the distinction of being the first distro to offer you GNOME 2.12! Featuring a refined look and improvements in just about every area, this is one hot tamale of a release! With 100s of bug fixes / feature improvements over 0.8.1, there are simply too many changes to list here...." Read the release announcement for more details.

Musix GNU+Linux 0.26

A new version of Musix GNU+Linux, a Knoppix-based live CD with a selection of specialist software for musicians, has been released: "The Musix GNU+Linux development team is proud to present a new improved version of the 100% free operating system for musicians." The release announcement, available in Spanish and English, includes some details about improvements in this release, such as substantial performance optimisation, addition of Timidity with Freepats and Hydrogen drum machine, synchronisation with Debian 'etch', and other new features.

Tao Live CD 4.02

Live CD is a live CD edition of Tao Linux, a distribution rebuilt from source RPMs of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. An updated version 4.02 has been released: "A new version of the Tao Live CD is available. Version 4.02 features: documentation for beginners (French and English); support for English (Canada & USA), French (Canada) and Spanish (Mexico) locales; kernel 2.6.9-11.SquashFS2; support for USB storage of userspace (still experimental). Tao Live uses a Squash filesystem to fit 2GB of programs into a standard bootable CD. OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Gaim, XMMS, K3b and many other programs are included. A few booting options are currently available." Read the full release announcement for further information.

Novell has announced the release of SUSE Linux 10.0, with availability in retail and online stores in early October: "Novell today announced SUSE Linux 10.0 will be available in retail and online stores in early October 2005. ... The full featured desktop delivered in SUSE Linux 10.0 includes the newest version of the popular Firefox web browser; the latest version of the Windows-compatible OpenOffice.org 2.0 office suite; email and instant messaging clients; graphics creation, editing, and management applications; plus important security tools like spam blockers, anti-virus software and an integrated firewall. Among the numerous new and updated features are the Beagle desktop search engine and Amarok with MP3 support out of the box." SUSE Linux 10.0 will retail for €59. For more information please read the complete press release. The final release of SUSE LINUX 10.0 is also expected to be available for free download on October 6th.

Slackware Linux 10.2

The latest information from Slackware's current changelog is that the release of Slackware Linux 10.2 is a matter of days, if not hours: "OK, everything was set in stone except for these things. ;-) There may still be a couple more changes (maybe), but this is pretty close." The official 4-CD set of Slackware Linux 10.2 can be pre-ordered from The Slackware Store for US$39.95.

As many of you have noticed, we have recently launched an experimental Podcast edition of DistroWatch Weekly. Shawn Milo is the person who has been doing his best to bring this to you every week; just please note that due to technical issues and time zone differences, the Podcast edition will be released up to 24 hours after the publication of DistroWatch Weekly. You can now also subscribe to the XML feed. In case you have any suggestions (including ideas for background music) about the Podcast edition, please email directly to Shawn Milo (shawnmilo at distrowatch.com). And, by the way, if you wish to contribute to the Podcast edition, our US-based readers can do so by calling 1-206-3-D-WATCH (206-339-2824) and leave a message, which will be sent to us as an electronic file. The quality's not great, so record your own if you have the equipment.

New distributions on the waiting list

CPX-MINI USB. CPX-MINI USB is a KANOTIX-based live Linux distribution that fits on a bootable 256MB USB storage device.

KuruJa Linux. KuruJa Linux is a new Brazilian Linux distribution based on Kurumin Linux, with the inclusion of Java packages for development.

Nonux. Nonux is a new Dutch Linux distribution, a combined live and installation CD based on Slackware and GNOME. The distribution is optimised for business use, with some applications localised into Dutch.

X-DSL. X-DSL is a small, but fully-functional Linux distribution for the Xbox, based on Damn Small Linux.

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